


End of the Line

by Wirrrn



Category: Jeepers Creepers 2 (2003)
Genre: (canonical homophobia from one character), M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-26
Updated: 2019-08-26
Packaged: 2020-09-27 02:47:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,326
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20400421
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wirrrn/pseuds/Wirrrn
Summary: "Do not get off this bus, or a big scary monster will eat you!" Whilst the Creeper is hunting everybody, Dante and Izzy hunt each other.





	End of the Line

"Now they will know why they are afraid of the dark;  
Now they shall learn why they fear the night..."  
(CONAN THE BARBARIAN)

"Darkness. The town is being devoured by Darkness;  
The Demon is awakening! ...Spreading those wings!"  
(SILENT HILL (Playstation))

"Volare qui potest, ne serpat"  
('he who can fly, let him not creep')  
-Pontonus, COLLECTIO PROVERBIUM

"Do not get off this bus, or a big scary monster will eat you!"  
(SOUTH PARK)

* * * 

"...Anyone see him yet?"

"-What happened? Where's he gone?"

"~Coach? Coach?!!"

"...He can't have just..."

"-telling you it *ate* him; why won't you believe-"

"~Goddammit Izzy, don't get so close, ya homo~"

"-Leave Izz alone, Scott!"

"~Thing grabbed Coach like he weighed nothi-"

"Fuck, does anybody see *it*?"

-Faces press against the windows all down one side, trained upwards. Bled into Geisha masks by shock, with tight crimson slices for mouths, these pallid circles stare out through the night-filled glass, each so tightly crammed against it in the hopes of seeing something in the few inches of black, starlit space between the tree-line and the roof that their harried sweat makes them stick slightly to the cool, slick surface of their chosen panes. Take away the neon-yellow box of the bus around the windows and they could be shock-eyed fish trapped in some nightmare aquarium.

One of the boys squints, rubs a hand over the raised ridge of scars over one temple in what has become an unconscious, nervous tic. "-Is that... hey I can see something, I think-"

He leans over another of the young men to get a better look from another window. Said young man looks back over his shoulder casually, stiffens, then explodes. "~Man, stop pressing up against me! I mean it, you Gay fuc-"

"*Scott*." Who knew that the team's relaxed star quarterback could have a voice that would flay steel? And that he could channel authority when he was shirtless and covered in the sweat of both exertion and panic? "-I mean it; Let Izz the fuck alone, right*now*."

Scott backed off, defeat and sullen rage warring on a face that would have been handsome, if it wasn't perpetually twisted in loathsome mockery. "Whoa, sorry *Dante*, dude; Didn't know that Izzy-Or-Isn't-He was your personal mascot."

"You guys stop it!" One of the girls, although by now all of them are so panic-stricken that the pitch of their voices is basically the same no matter what the lay of their chromosomes. "-We're *all* being hunted by this... Thing; we have to- *Jesus*!"

Black sky unfurls endlessly above them, through the windows, through the horribly tempting hole yawning in the torn roof. 

Black sky.

Then something blacker.

It falls from the heavens like winged ink, almost invisible against the great, velvet night. As it flaps against the star-field with the terrible, greased swiftness of nightmare, it blots out the myriad sprinkle of unreachable stars with a man-shape that is subtlety, horribly *wrong*.

The huge wings

\- Ten feet? Twenty? 

Carry it from the almost airless wastes of the high atmosphere to the fear-rich morass of oxygen tenting the broken school bus, with eight gargantuan flaps. For a moment, a split second, it roosts on the hood like some improbable ornament, facing in and leering, then it is gone with a cheery wave and a great rush of air that can be felt even *through* the jambs of the windows.

Felt and *smelled- a horrible carrion wind that blows through the cramped enclosure of the bus and brings with it the thick, spoiled-caramel tang of a slaughterhouse.

The creature has melted back into the skyscape before the first screams manage to rip free from shock-raw throats.

Where it has perched, briefly, atop the hood of the school bus, it has left them their Coach.

...Some of him.

* * * * 

Someone nudges Izzy with his forearm, as his hands are busily worrying the seat-cover of the chair in front of him into tatters.

"Hey, Izz."

The journalism student doesn't have to turn from his shift guarding the yawning tear in the roof of the bus, jagged, dark and frightful, to identify the owner of the cocky burr behind him. 

"-Hello, Jake." 

One of his hands moves to stroke the raised scar at his brow; he catches himself, balls the hand into a loose fist and jams it in his pocket. "-How can I help you?"

A bronze blur at the edge of his vision as the handsome, shirtless jock stands and moves into view. Shifting nervously to and fro on the balls of his feet, Jake's dark eyes repeatedly find and then shy away from Izzy's own.

The pale youth sighs. "You can keep your ass against the side doors there, Jake, if you're afraid I might go in for a Stealth Fuck."

Jake flushes a deep rose from scalp to sternum. "No dude, that's okay...I um...I just wanted to...I'm not; aw hell, Izz, look; Scott's a major league fuckwad, okay?"

One of the other man's brows quirks, archly, and he finally swings around in his chair to regard the standing man, curiously. "-No argument here."

A tentative grin from Jake. "-Yeah. Racist, Homophobic idiot. Hey, if that demon thing eats him, it'll probably get the shits, seeing as how he's so sour and all."

Izzy risks an answering smile. "-Hmmm; He does have a great ass; pity he's an *asshole* to go with it."

Jake cocks his head. "So you do think he's cute?"

"-I have eyes, Jake. Not that I'd ever fuck him; I have *standards*, also."

"No, I mean-" another blush "-You are Gay, then?"

Izzy pauses and stares at the other man, looking unsure as to whether he wants to laugh out loud or punch himself. "-Uh, yeah, I guess I am... Is that a problem?"

Jake's hand has mysteriously teleported onto Izzy's shoulder. "No way dude, not at all. Like I said before, 'live and let love', right? Besides" he leans closer, his voice dropping to a sibilant stage whisper that goes straight to Izzy's groin, despite himself. "-Join the club, dude..."

Izzy's mouth hangs open. "-*You* Jake?"

The other man nods and dips a hand into his hip pocket, emerging with a picture. "His name is Chris. We met at a Campus Orientation Day for Drake College."

Izzy smiles back at the blond jock in the photo, then returns it to Jake. "-Cute. Hey, isn't that the school that had some kind of... Vampire scandal?"

"*Please* don't tell me you believe in vampires, Izz."

"-Hey, when I got up this morning I didn't believe in creepy, winged bogeymen, either." Izzy waves towards the night sky roiling past the windows.

"Touche." 

Aiming a soft smile towards the other man, Jake slides into the seat beside him with a soft sigh of faux leather. "In case you're wondering, Izz; my impromptu Coming Out Party here does have a point. I'm not like that asshole, Scott. I'm like *you*, and it was wrong of me to tease you this morning. I should have known better."

"-Well, at least we got the chance to check out each others' cocks; the morning wasn't a total write-off."

"This is true." Jake nudges his friend, playfully. "So, was I right? Do you have a thing for Dante?"

Izzy's face flames red, save for the numb keloid tissue of his facial scars, standing out nerveless and dead white against all that pink, tributaries from a strange river.

Jake claps him on the back. "I'll take that as a yes."

Izzy is about to respond when a fluttered movement from outside makes both men whirl to the window, suddenly rigid and bloodless.

-An owl turns the pitiless, feathered dish of its face in their direction. It is not the Hunter they were afraid to see, nor are they the prey it wants, and it turns from them coolly, flying from its perch atop the bus and into the night-dripping limbs of the distant woodlands without a backward glance.

Turning back from the window, and Izzy seems nervous. "-Do you... Do you think Dante would be interested?"

The bronzed youth considers. "Hmmm... well, he does smile at you a lot, but then he's pretty easy going, he smiles at everybody. Well, except Sco-, hey, he rescued you from the asshole twice today, didn't he? And every time he comes near you, he seems to conveniently have his shirt off."

"-Dude, Dante's *always* got his shirt off; why do you think I fell for the guy in the first place? I'd be surprised if he even *has* a shirt. And what kind of evidence do you call that? You're shirtless right now!"

"Yeah, well with all the scared people crammed in here, it's more of a sauna than a school bus. No wonder that creepy thing is hanging around; there's so much body heat and locker room funk in the air, it must be like a blood-trail to a shark."

Jake slides across and out of the seat, reaching over to haul Izzy to his feet as well, a sly smile returning to his face. "C'mon, Izz; our detective skills obviously suck. We're just gonna have to take the direct approach and ask the guy already."

Izzy swallows around a suddenly tight throat, but allows himself to be pulled through the throng of watchful, whispering, or in some cases, fitfully sleeping passengers.

(As they pass beneath the gaping, ragged yaw in the wounded roof of the bus, each man instinctively presses closer to the other, hunkering down in their clothing and keeping their eyes fixed on the night visible through the gap, alert for any movement against the star-field)

They pass the hole and relax again, somewhat. Jake's lips press close to his friend's ear, for secrecy as much as any concern for the sleepers. "He's napping on the rear seat; it's his turn to guard the roof, next, after Josh."

Izzy nods, then looks askance. "-You're coming along?"

"Like I'd miss this! Anyway, if the big guy goes for you, maybe the two of you could join me n' Chris for a group grope, when we get out of this."

"-Thanks for not saying "*if*, Jake."

"Hey, we're gonna make it. So what if that thing marked us all for dinner? There's only one of it, no matter how strong. And we're all watching out for each other. Well, except for Scott. He only looks out for-"

"-Himself, yeah I heard" the other man recalls, trying very hard to convince himself of the truth of the words.

The two boys reach the back of the bus, make for the large seat in the very rear of the crippled vehicle.

Jake paused, head cocked. "Well, I'll be jiggered". He reaches out and picks up a rumpled swathe of orange fabric. "Dante *does* own a shirt, after all!"

Izz is frowning. "-So now we have the football jersey, but not the football jock to go with it? We didn't pass him, Jake; how the hell could we lose a guy on a dead school bus, fer shit's sake?"

Minxie, her face streaked with dirt and sweat, leans over the seat nearest the boys. "...He and a few others went to bury what's left of Coach; I tried to stop them, but Scotty had them convinced they owed Coach that much."

Izzy looks sick. "-Dante went *outside*?!"

She nods. "...And Scott and Kimball and Andy and a few others."

Jake has paled beneath his tan. "Oh. Shit."

* * * 

The two men emerge from the bus ducking low, avoiding the sky, as though they are disembarking from a helicopter.

And into a slaughterhouse.

The pieces of Coach that The Creeper left for them as an hideous memento on the windshield are flung far over the other side of the road, coated with loose, gunmetal asphalt from the Emergency lane. Not all of the winged creature's macabre gift comes from the Coach's head, but enough of his facial features remain that the man can be said to be keeping watch over the glistening, copper-stinking river that the road has become.

Both boys spot Kendall immediately, at the same time, primarily because the teen has been spread out over such a wide surface area. Apparently it had been his *feet* that the thing had wanted- they are the only things missing from the boy, strewn all over the macadam though he is.

A yellow, liquid mass on the exact centre of the white-dotted median line gives Jake pause for a moment, then he realizes it is the part-digested nachos with refried beans that Kendall had been eating on the bus a few hour ago, and Jake turns away, retching.

Dante is paramount in Izzy's mind as he whips his head from horror to horror with quick, frantic scans like a panicked bird. He is hunting for familiar features with his heart in his mouth, and feels an awful, guilty sense of relief when each hijacked, meaty ruin is revealed as someone other than the affable jock who has *won* that heart.

-This ruptured scarecrow beside the burned-out road flares, ribs open and lungs gone, used to be Danny.

-That arm over there, hand skinned an minus the fingers, which the Creeper must have coveted, boasts a tattoo on the upper bicep that means it was ripped free from Josh.

-This strange, moist husk wrapped around the ruined front wheel rim seems at first to be a snakeskin, but on closer inspection is revealed as a spinal column, plucked clean of vertebrae so that the actual, horsehair-like fibres of the chord itself are exposed, wrapped around the shredded scraps of a letterman jacket that is the only thing that identifies this denuded...thing... as once having been Tony.

Jake has moved around to the far side of the bus. Three steps into the dead vehicle's shadow and he almost trips over Scott and Deaundre. Scott is totally untouched by the Creeper, and sits quietly by the vehicle's rear exit, staring into space, rocking himself, quite calmly, and totally ignoring Dea's attempts to call him by name. Dea is bloody, several nasty-looking slices wending their way down his torso, but he seems to have fought the demon off.

Dea looks up. "...Hunh... hey Jake. Y'know, my Grandpa was a Jazzer when he was my age; played the alto-sax, down in New Orleans. French Quarter. Pretty damn good, too. Pappy always used to scare us nights, when he'd tell us about this Blues Man, name of Roberts Johnson? According to Pappy, Johnson couldn't play his way outta ten types of shit, but he disappeared one night, into the swamp, didn't come back for six months. When he came back, that man could *play*... People used to say he'd gone to a crossroads at midnight, sold his soul for talent. Jake... we're broke down at a crossroads, Jake! I think... I think this thing is what met Johnson that night, on the road..."

Izzy has searched all around the bus, identified every torn-apart corpse, but this one lying before him now. Everything above the navel looks like month-old dog food, but as he moves to turn it over, despite the mad rush of hope, he just knows that this corpse has to be-

"~Dante?!"

Izzy almost screams aloud; only the knowledge of the Creeper out there somewhere, in the night, holds his throat still. He peers at the blackness around him with eyes almost totally swallowed up by panic-widened white.

Then again:

"~Izzy? I said can you hear me? It's Dante!!"

At the sound of the urgent, throaty whisper, Izzy is torn between weeping with relief or whooping with joy. He decides that neither would be particularly wise under the current circumstances, and contents himself with a smile almost big enough to light the night sky around him as he whispers back.

"-Dante? You're okay?! Where are you, guy?"

"~Behind you" the voice is a judicious notch closer and louder, but Dante's signature dusty burr remains in it, regardless. "~About six feet to your left, in the luggage well."

The area beneath the main body of the bus where the team's equipment and their bags are kept is cramped and humid, the light harsh- the vehicle's emergency lighting and the street lamps beyond bounced off the damp asphalt of the road and turned the tight space into a garish, neon-yellow coffin. But as Izzy slips beneath the raised wheel-rim, opens the (fortunately well hidden and flush with the bus' paint job) door to the compartment and into the space and sees the handsome, wonderfully unhurt 

(if pale and worried)

face of the star quarterback he has fallen for, it suddenly seems as though this boxy, glaring bolt hole was a room in some storybook palace.

Baffled and fearful, Dante is nonetheless clearly delighted to see the other man safe. That delight holds and then catches fire into something *more*, as a wordless Izzy slips an arm around the back of the athlete's long neck and pulls him forward, into a kiss.

A stretched, humid beat, and then Dante pulls back.

The slighter man is momentarily terrified that he's ruined everything-

(a slick, serpentine sibilance ribbons through his mind and whispers at him to run out into the road and let the Creeper rip free his turncoat heart)

but then the bigger, blond youth grins and pulls Izzy's face back against his own, and there could have been an army of Creepers right outside their hiding place and neither boy would notice.

* * * 

Jake has gone back to the interior of the bus. Jake has taken Dea and

-despite himself-

Scott, and returned to the bus. He's found a two-way radio, clutched in the still-insensate Scott's white boiled hands, and they're going to try... something.

Dante and Izzy are trying something too.

Dante and Izzy are lying together, naked and entwined, prone on the carpeted surface of the luggage space on the side of the bus. Both men would have preferred to have coupled in a more intimate position-perhaps one riding the other, or on all fours from behind, but there simply wasn't enough room in their cramped, sulfur-lit bolt hole.

Dante's tanned body looks even more golden in the harsh yellow light, and now that he is totally nude.

Izzy had always thought him attractive, even more so when he wandered around both shirtless and oblivious, but now, naked and focused, he is nothing short of  
breath-taking; a Michelangelo sculpture given hot and dynamic flesh.

Izzy's own pale muscles shine in the neon as the two men move together. Dante kisses the slighter boy, deeply, holding his face with one hand, gently stroking the ridge of scar tissue at his temple with the other, in a display of tenderness that Izzy has to fight against if he is not to come right there and then. 

Soft grunts and sighs echo in the small space as the boys move together, their chests and legs making sibilant rasps as they slide along their mates; that skink-skin susurrus that only two male bodies joined in sexual congress can utter.

Dante moans into the other man's mouth, thrusting forward against Izzy's cock with a choppy pump of his own as the paler boy slides a leg up and over his tanned hip and folds it over his ass to pull him forward, even closer into their embrace.

The men roll onto their sides together, opening up as much of their bodies to exploration as possible. Izzy gentle bites at Dante's shoulder, raises a sweaty palm and rubs at the bands of grease that tiger-stripe the man's flank where he has rolled against the oiled undercarriage of the bus at some point.

As he moves his attentions from the jock's shoulder to his pecs, Izzy catches movement at the edge of his  
vision, through the luggage compartment door, open an infinitesimal crack. He looks up, distractedly.

The Creeper. On the other side of the road, maybe twenty feet away. 

Looking straight at him.

The pale youth's heart kicks in his chest like a dying frog, even as Dante lathes the nipples above it with his sandpaper tongue and mistakes Izzy's low wail of terror for one of passion. He feels his pulse break against his ears like a great scarlet wave as he waits for the thing to leap, grinning, and pluck Dante off him screaming into the night, or perhaps to ram those wickedly sharp looking spikes on its jowls clean through their joined bodies.

And waits.

And waits.

And watches, incredulous, as the thing exudes along, black tongue and begins to preen itself like some improbable bird, turning its face to the sky.

It *hasn't* seen them.

Izzy bites his lip to stop a moan of ecstasy escaping as Dante keeps pumping, the larger boy encouraged to redouble his efforts by the spasming jerks of Izzy's muscles, never dreaming that his pale lover's shivering is due to as much terror as ardour.

//quailing in terrified pleasure// the journalist's quick mind provides //there's even a word for it, French: 'Frisson'//

If ever a definition of the term was needed, here it was, with this pallid, lean youth, trembling somewhere between nightmare and wet dream as he is simultaneously fucked by his lover and frightened by this bewinged agent of mayhem.

Izzy slowly moves his gaze up to Dante, before carefully returning them to the thing. The jock has not noticed anything, so lost is he to the geography of his lover's body. Izzy would be flattered, if they were in less perilous circumstances.

He doesn't want to alarm the other man, in case any response alerted the seemingly reposing predator. The Creeper has now retired to the top of an Emergency lane signpost on the far roadside, and is perched there with its great wings open as it carefully examines the squiggly red and blue veins in them, for what the boy doesn't know. It unfurls them to their full extent for a moment, the thin membrane of skin between the rib-fingers backlit by streetlights into ancient, yellowed parchment for a moment, then it beats them together with a great, flapping pop, a satisfied expression on its twisted face as if it were an old man contentedly cracking his knuckles, and then it takes to the air.

Dante has raised his lust-fogged head in the direction of the space the creature had occupied scant seconds ago, but sees nothing. He is about to return his attention to that fascinating scar on Izzy's temple with seems to also be one of the slighter boy's sweet-spots, to judge by his moans, when there is a marked, if muffled by their current position, thud from the bus roof somewhere above them and the whole bus rocks, as though something has hit it.

Or landed on it.

-Dante pauses mid-thrust, lifting his golden head again at the sound, sky clad eyes straining to peer through layered panels of metal. 

Another thud, this time followed by a horrible, slow sound that is easily identified as slow, measured footsteps.

Izzy reaches up and pulls the bigger boy back down to him. "-Don't stop." He thrusts pallid hips up against his lover.

Dante pumps forward almost reflexively in response, even as he frowns down at the slighter youth. "But what if it was-"

The entire bus rocks on its frame as the Creeper takes off from the roof again- from the muffled screams coming through to the two boys through the floor of the vehicle above them, it seems that their malefactor has not taken flight empty handed. One of the voices yelling some feet overhead is Jake's, calling for calm, so at least the latest victim isn't his new friend.

A twisted little corner of his mind

//I hope it got Scotty//

makes him squirm with guilt. He instinctively looks to Dante to centre himself- amazingly, that beautiful face still seems somehow innocent when covered in a flush of sex-sweat- but the affable jock reflects guilt back at him from his own eyes.

"Izz, that ...thing. It took someone again."

Izzy reaches up a hand, cards it through short, ash-blond hair, almost the same colour as the drying corn-stalks flanking them on either side of the road.

The corn stalks within which something horrible was doubtlessly now happening to yet another of his frie-

//stop it!//

"-Someone will come, Dante. Someone'll find us. This road has to have more traffic soon."

//It *has* to//

Dante nods, turns his face slightly to suck at the other man's wrist, smiling at the resultant low moan. "It's just... I feel like going up there, helping, y'know? There's fuck all we can do, but... I mean, it's great being with you, you're great, don't get me wrong, but I feel So. Fucking. Useless!"

"-You're not useless, man. And I know you want to help; so do I. But you're right- what can we do except tell everyone not to panic and wait till help comes? And besides-" 

(Despite himself, a hand worries at the scars on his temple again)

"-I just don't want that thing taking you from me."

Dante's face softens, and he falls back into Izzy's embrace. "No way guy; never. Now that I've got you, I'm keeping you for the duration..."

The two boys return their attentions to each other, erasing their terror with sweat, spit and semen.

-And, from its perch atop a telephone pole some distance away, The Creeper pops a pliable, red wet mass in its mouth, marks its next victim on board the bus

//perhaps one of the females, this time//

Then returns its attention to the frenzied coupling on the side of the bus. The two men are fortunate it is not in need of any genital flesh at the moment, it thinks, then grins to itself, pops another salty treat between its fangs and settles in for a pre-dinner show.

\------------------------END---------------------------

**Author's Note:**

> The creepiest thing about this movie series remains director Victor Salva, but I do enjoy the extremely homoerotic second movie. And Al Santos's Dante being constantly shirtless :D
> 
> The story about Roberts Johnson, the blues man who allegedly sold his soul for talent, is a real life rumour, spread most often by Johnson himself!
> 
> Anyone who knows the origins of Jake's boyfriend, "Chris from Drake College". I am impressed. Also I pity you :D


End file.
